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Here's your chance to play T driver

MBTA Gifts reports it's just gotten in 70 fare boxes from 1980s-era T buses and Boeing Vertol Green Line trolleys and plans to offer them for sale.

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Comments

If you were nice and you knew the driver, he allow you to push the lever and the coils would fall into the collection box, pretty exiting for an eight year old.

I don't know when they were taken out ('93 maybe) but they were replaced with one fare machines that can also scan the T-Cards which would become the Charlie cards

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Buy the fare boxes and install them in new minivans to sell at a profit. Parents get to teach kids that there is no such thing as a free ride.

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Instead of calling Mom, hail her on your smartphone! Just be careful, she charges surge pricing if you make her wait or offer to give rides to someone else without asking first.

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IMAGE(http://www.johnsonfarebox.com/fare8b.jpg)
Johnson
bought out Keene, which was eventually bought out by GFI.

As a kid, I also remember the Johnson Model D boxes on our Troy Fifth Avenue busses. It was fun to watch the crank spinning 'round as the coins were counted. Once, I put pennies into the box which caused it to jam. The operator had to struggle with the crank manually to get it cleared. He wasn't happy.
                    IMAGE(http://www.johnsonfarebox.com/fare10a.jpg)

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Remember when you could drop a bunch of coins in with one hand as you walked past? It's too bad that sometimes we move backwards while we're trying to move forwards.

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I rather suspect that the current farebox design was intended to discourage cash transactions by making them as inconvenient as possible. We could speculate as to why, but my guess would be that counting-room scandals over the years played no small part.

The real winner of a system would have been to disallow cash-on-board entirely, and make CharlieTickets, CharlieCards, and CharlieCard recharges widely available across the entire MBTA service area. As in, walk into any convenience store, corner spa, newsstand, whatever, and be able to pay cash (or credit/debit card) and get a fare instrument. Throw in fare vending machines on the sidewalks at high-use stations as well.

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that the MBTA promised when they first announced the proposed conversion to automated fare collection in 2005.

Not sure exactly what the proposed terms were, but most stores told the MBTA "no way" when approrached about installing fare machines on their premises.

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Have a cite? I never heard that the T was going to do away with all cash on board.

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I think you gave the T too much credit. I suspect the current farebox was just a plain bad design, and nobody at the T bothered to make an issue out of it before it was too late.

Speaking of short-sighted policies, the $2.10 fare is bugging me more and more. When a bus passenger holds everything up to fish for that last 10 cents, how much does the delay cost the T, let alone all the other passengers?

Various sources, including Globe articles, said they did this because of a new state law which limits fare increases to 5 percent every two years. But the only law I could find was https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleXXII/Chapter161a/S... , which only says a fare increase of 10 percent or more requires a hearing and environmental impact study.

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See Session Law, Acts of 2013, Chapter 46, Section 61, part (d) (also, for historical reference, S1766 of the current session, amendment 107).

(d) The authority shall not increase fares at intervals of less than 24 months or at an annual rate greater than 5 per cent.

And yes, you are right about the $2.10 fare. The whole system is buggered up.

But the T has shown repeatedly that it does not care about riders, nor does it care about delays caused by boarding procedure and fare payment. The T would rather force everyone through a tiny front door with steps that cause elderly riders to trip and fall, rather than operate normally using all doors. It's about pure spitefulness. It's a form of collective punishment because a small number of riders were able to avoid paying a fare. Instead of properly pursuing and punishing only those fare evaders, the T has decided to vent its frustration on everyone. This causes a great deal of collateral harm, especially to riders with mobility impairments, and to the T itself by delaying trains so much that the drivers have to wave everyone on board just to keep up with a pale shadow of the schedule.

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Thanks.

So why didn't they wait a little more than two years, and raise fares to $2.25/$2.75?

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Where's the slot where you put the dollar bills and then the operator takes a piece of metal and jams them in to the slot? Oh, I miss the old days on the Green Line in Newton ($3 fare inbound only, no Charlie Cards).

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Oh yeah. You had to fold the bills twice and half the time there wouldn't be any room left in the slot and the driver would be annoyed. Back when the Fenway stop on the D Line was more expensive then the St. Mary's C line stop not two blocks away.

Oh how I miss those day. Wait, no I don't miss those days at all. But I did enjoy the free outbound above ground Green Line stops.

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... so the operator had to carefully straighten out the dollar bills so they could be folded and placed into his own pocket.


                                    IMAGE(http://charlieonthembta.files.wordpress.com/2006/12/bills_jammed_small.jpg?w=169)

       From a blog with some recent interesting history of fare collection on the

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Thanks, been looking for that link for a while.

Sadly, the S&B farebox has now been adopted elsewhere in the States. Seems there's no idea too terrible for American public transit.

Not that Cubic is such a wonderful company. Actually, quite a horrible company. What a choice.

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S&B and Cubic aren't the only choices. GFI still exists, though it was bought by the company SPX.

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I bet these would make a neat piggy bank.

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It's only a matter of time before I get spit on or assaulted by some lunatic who doesn't want to pay their fare.

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